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LoRa modulator plugin

Introduction

This plugin can be used to code and modulate a transmission signal based on Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS). The basic idea is to transform each symbol of a MFSK modulation to an ascending frequency ramp shifted in time. It could equally be a descending ramp but this one is reserved to detect a break in the preamble sequence (synchronization). This plugin has been designed to work in conjunction with the ChirpChat demodulator plugin that should be used ideally on the reception side.

It has clearly been inspired by the LoRa technique but is designed for experimentation and extension to other protocols mostly inspired by amateur radio techniques using chirp modulation to transmit symbols. Thanks to the MFSK to chirp translation it is possible to adapt any MFSK based mode.

LoRa is a property of Semtech and the details of the protocol are not made public. However a LoRa compatible protocol has been implemented based on the reverse engineering performed by the community. It is mainly based on the work done in https://github.com/myriadrf/LoRa-SDR. You can find more information about LoRa and chirp modulation here:

To get an idea of what is LoRa: here
A detailed inspection of LoRa modulation and protocol: here

This LoRa encoder is designed for experimentation. For production grade applications it is recommended to use dedicated hardware instead.

Modulation characteristics from LoRa have been augmented with more bandwidths and FFT bin collations (DE factor). Plain TTY and ASCII have also been added and there are plans to add some more complex typically amateur radio MFSK based modes like JT65.

Note: this plugin is officially supported since version 6.

Interface

The top and bottom bars of the channel window are described here

1: Frequency shift from center frequency of reception

Use the wheels to adjust the frequency shift in Hz from the center frequency of reception. Left click on a digit sets the cursor position at this digit. Right click on a digit sets all digits on the right to zero. This effectively floors value at the digit position. Wheels are moved with the mousewheel while pointing at the wheel or by selecting the wheel with the left mouse click and using the keyboard arrows. Pressing shift simultaneously moves digit by 5 and pressing control moves it by 2.

2: Channel power

The signal is frequency modulated with a constant envelope hence this value should be constant. To prevent possible overshoots the signal is reduced by 1 dB from the full scale. Thus this should always display -1 dB.

3: Channel mute

Use this button to mute/unmute transmission.

4: Bandwidth

This is the bandwidth of the ChirpChat signal. Similarly to LoRa the signal sweeps between the lower and the upper frequency of this bandwidth. The sample rate of the ChirpChat signal in seconds is exactly one over this bandwidth in Hertz.

In the LoRa standard there are 2 base bandwidths: 500 and 333.333 kHz. A 400 kHz base has been added. Possible bandwidths are obtained by a division of these base bandwidths by a power of two from 1 to 64. Extra divisor of 128 is provided to achieve smaller bandwidths that can fit in a SSB channel. Finally special divisors from a 384 kHz base are provided to allow even more narrow bandwidths.

Thus available bandwidths are:

500000 (500000 / 1) Hz
400000 (400000 / 1) Hz not in LoRa standard
333333 (333333 / 1) Hz
250000 (500000 / 2) Hz
200000 (400000 / 2) Hz not in LoRa standard
166667 (333333 / 2) Hz
125000 (500000 / 4) Hz
100000 (400000 / 4) Hz not in LoRa standard
83333 (333333 / 4) Hz
62500 (500000 / 8) Hz
50000 (400000 / 8) Hz not in LoRa standard
41667 (333333 / 8) Hz
31250 (500000 / 16) Hz
25000 (400000 / 16) Hz not in LoRa standard
20833 (333333 / 16) Hz
15625 (500000 / 32) Hz
12500 (400000 / 32) Hz not in LoRa standard
10417 (333333 / 32) Hz
7813 (500000 / 64) Hz
6250 (400000 / 64) Hz not in LoRa standard
5208 (333333 / 64) Hz
3906 (500000 / 128) Hz not in LoRa standard
3125 (400000 / 128) Hz not in LoRa standard
2604 (333333 / 128) Hz not in LoRa standard
1500 (384000 / 256) Hz not in LoRa standard
750 (384000 / 512) Hz not in LoRa standard
375 (384000 / 1024) Hz not in LoRa standard

The ChirpChat signal is oversampled by four therefore it needs a baseband of at least four times the bandwidth. This drives the maximum value on the slider automatically.

5: Spread Factor

This is the Spread Factor parameter of the ChirpChat signal. This is the log2 of the possible frequency shifts used over the bandwidth (3). The number of symbols is 2^SF-DE where SF is the spread factor and DE the Distance Enhancement factor (8). To

6: Distance Enhancement factor

The LoRa standard specifies 0 (no DE) or 2 (DE active). The ChirpChat range is extended to all values between 0 and 4 bits.

This is the log2 of the number of frequency shifts separating two consecutive shifts that represent a symbol. On the receiving side this decreases the probability to detect the wrong symbol as an adjacent FFT bin. It can also overcome frequency drift on long messages.

In practice it is difficult on the Rx side to make correct decodes if only one FFT bin is used to code one symbol (DE=0). It is therefore recommended to use a factor of 1 or more.

8: Number of preamble chirps

This is the number of preamble chirps to transmit that are used for the Rx to synchronize. The LoRa standard specifies it can be between 2 and 65535. Here it is limited to the 4 to 20 range that corresponds to realistic values. The RN2483 uses 6 preamble chirps. You may use 12 preamble chirps or more to facilitate signal acquisition with poor SNR on the Rx side.

9: Idle time between transmissions

When sending a message repeatedly this is the time between the end of one transmission and the start of the next transmission.

10: Message and encoding details

ChirpChat is primarily designed to make QSOs in the amateur radio sense. To be efficient the messages have to be kept short and minimal therefore the standard exchange follows WSJT scheme and is reflected in the sequence of messages you can follow with the message selection combo (10.9): CQ, Reply to CQ, Report to callee, Report to caller (R-Report), RRR and 73.

To populate messages you can specify your callsign (10.5), the other party callsign (10.6), your QRA locator (10.7) and a signal report (10.8)

10.1: Modulation scheme

LoRa: LoRa compatible
ASCII: 7 bit plain ASCII without FEC and CRC. Requires exactly 7 bit effective samples thus SF-DE = 7 where SF is the spreading factor (5) and DE the distance enhancement factor (6)
TTY: 5 bit Baudot (Teletype) without FEC and CRC. Requires exactly 5 bit effective samples thus SF-DE = 5 where SF is the spreading factor (5) and DE the distance enhancement factor (6)

10.2: Number of FEC parity bits (LoRa)

This is a LoRa specific feature. Each byte of the payload is split into two four bit nibbles and Hamming code of various "strength" in number of parity bits can be applied to these nibbles. The number of parity bits can vary from 1 to 4. 0 (no FEC) has been added but is not part of the LoRa original standard:

0: no FEC
1: 1 bit parity thus Hamming H(4,5) applies
2: 2 bit parity thus Hamming H(4,6) applies
3: 3 bit parity thus Hamming H(4,7) applies
4: 4 bit parity thus Hamming H(4,8) applies

10.3: Append two byte CRC to payload (LoRa)

This is a LoRa specific feature. A 2 bytes CRC can be appended to the payload.

10.4: Send a header at the start of the payload (LoRa)

This is a LoRa specific feature and is also known as explicit (with header) or implicit (without header) modes. In explicit mode a header with net payload length in bytes, presence of a CRC and number of parity bits is prepended to the actual payload. This header has a 1 byte CRC and is coded with H(4,8) FEC.

10.5: My callsign (QSO mode)

Enter your callsign so it can populate message palceholders (See next)

10.6: Your callsign (QSO mode)

Enter the other party callsign so it can populate message palceholders (See next)

10.7: My locator (QSO mode)

Enter your Maidenhead QRA locator so it can populate message palceholders (See next)

10.8: My report (QSO mode)

Enter the signal report you will send to the other party so it can populate message palceholders (See next)

10.9: Message selector

This lets you choose which pre-formatted message to send:

None: empty message. In fact this is used to make a transition to trigger sending of the sa,e ,essage again. It is used internally by the "play" button (11) and can be used with the REST API.
Beacon: a beacon message
CQ: (QSO mode) CQ general call message
Reply: (QSO mode) reply to a CQ call
Report: (QSO mode) signal report to the callee of a CQ call
R-Report: (QSO mode) signal report to the caller of a CQ call
RRR: (QSO mode) report received confirmation to the callee
73: (QSO mode) confirmation back to the caller and closing the QSO
QSO text: (QSO mode) free form message with callsigns
Text: plain text
Bytes: binary message in the form of a string of bytes. Use the hex window (12) to specify the message

10.10: Revert to standard messages

Reformat all predefined messages in standard messages with placeholders. The Generate button (13) replaces the placeholders with the given QSO elements (10.5 to 10.8)

Beacon: VVV DE %1 %2
CQ: CQ DE %1 %2
Reply: %1 %2 %3
Report: %1 %2 %3
R-Reply: %1 %2 R%3
RRR: %1 %2 RRR
73: %1 %2 73
QSO text: %1 %2 %3

10.11 Play current message immediately

This starts playing the current selected message immediately. It may be necessary to use this button after a change of modulation and/or coding parameters.

10.12: Number of message repetitions

The message is repeated this number of times (use 0 for infinite). The end of one message sequence and the start of the next is separated by the delay specified with the "Idle" slidebar (9)

10.13: Generate messages

This applies the QSO elements (10.5 to 10.8) to the placeholders in messages to generate the final messages:

Beacon: VVV DE %1 %2: %1 is my call (10.5) and %2 is my locator (10.7)
CQ: CQ DE %1 %2: %1 is my call (10.5) and %2 is my locator (10.7)
Reply: %1 %2 %3: %1 is your call (10.6), %2 is my call (10.5) and %3 is my locator (10.7)
Report: %1 %2 %3: %1 is your call (10.6), %2 is my call (10.5) and %3 is my report (10.8)
R-Reply: %1 %2 R%3: %1 is your call (10.6), %2 is my call (10.5) and %3 is my report (10.8)
RRR: %1 %2 RRR: %1 is your call (10.6) and %2 is my call (10.5)
73: %1 %2 73: %1 is your call (10.6) and %2 is my call (10.5)
QSO text: %1 %2 %3: %1 is your call (10.6), %2 is my call (10.5) and %3 is the text specified as the free form text message

10.14: Sync word

This is a LoRa specific feature and is the sync word (byte) to transmit entered as a 2 nibble hexadecimal number.

11: Message text

This window lets you edit the message selected in (10.9). You can use %n placeholders that depend on the type of message selected.

Beacon: %1 is my callsign and %2 is my locator
CQ message: %1 is my callsign and %2 is my locator
Reply: %1 is the other callsign, %2 is my callsign and %3 is my locator
Report: %1 is the other callsign, %2 is my callsign and %3 is my report
R-Report: %1 is the other callsign, %2 is my callsign and %3 is my report
RRR: %1 is the other callsign and %2 is my callsign
73: %1 is the other callsign and %2 is my callsign
QSO Text: %1 is the other callsign, %2 is my callsign and %3 is the free text message
Text: free text message no placeholders
Bytes: binary message no placeholders

12: Message bytes

Use this line editor to specify the hex string used as the bytes message.

13: Symbol time

This is the duration of a symbol or chirp in milliseconds

14: Payload time

This is the duration of the message payload in milliseconds. It excludes the preamble, the sync word and synchronization (SFD) sequence.

15: Total time

This is the duration of the full message in milliseconds.

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